Tag Archives: mobile devices

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these podcasters from sharing their hi-jinks and shenanigans! Well, actually gloom of night might give us pause… This week J.D. gives us some helpful hints on how to prevent our children from making unapproved in-app purchases and Pedro tells us what apps to use to navigate and experience NYC like a native. In the news, Verizon buys Intel Media’s OnCue Internet-based television service; the Internet of Things gets hacked; the video game console war rages on; Hewlett-Packard brings back Windows 7; Samsung Galaxy S5 rumor mill picks up the pace; a comet chasing spacecraft wakes from a long nap; and The New Yorker magazine reminds us that there is still nothing quite like the power and reach of live over-the-air radio.

The problem of unapproved in-app purchases was back in the news last week, as the Federal Trade Commission announced a settlement with Apple in that case over children’s iOS shopping sprees without parental consent. Apple will be paying out at least $32.5 million in refunds to parents who suddenly found a whole pile of unexpected charges on their credit-card bills after letting the kids use their phones and tablets. As part of the settlement, Apple must change its billing practices to show that it has obtained informed consent from the credit-card holder before charging them for extra power packs, coins, weapons, lives and other virtual merchandise typically sold inside a mobile app itself — and not as a separate download from the App Store.

The FTC’s report said Apple failed to warn parents that by entering a password for what many assumed was just a single in-app charge, they were also giving their kids 15 minutes to make unlimited purchases without further parental permission or passwords. As many parents know, that’s plenty of time for some kids to rack up a few hundred dollars in charges. Since the suit, Apple has released an online guide to in-app purchases in its stores and more parents have educated themselves, (and are perhaps watching the kids a little more closely now).

The FTC-Apple case also gave Consumer Reports a reason to go looking at the Google Play Store, to see what its in-app purchase policies entailed. The magazine reported its findings in an article titled “Google Play Store lets your kid spend like a drunken sailor.” As Consumer Reports reminds everyone, Google Play has a policy of giving an in-app buyer 30 minutes of unsupervised shopping time before the store password needs to be re-entered.

In the meantime, if you have kids and mobile devices, take advantage of the available parental controls to keep your children from not only buying things from online app stores directly, but from even using certain apps on the phone or tablet without supervision. After all, the HBO GO app has a lot of great shows you can stream, but you probably don’t want your pre-teen kids gawping through a Sex and the Citymarathon while you’re at work.

While software parental controls may not be as effective as real-time human parental controls, they can help virtually corral the kids during those times when Mom and Dad are doing something else — like paying bills.